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Edward Coles Nov 2013
I felt his ring around my finger
Before we’d even touched hands.
A meek merchant of charm,
He desisted from cheap sentiments

And instead borrowed a will of silence
From some eastern monastery or other,
Citing his affections through silent smiles
And a shrug of his shoulders which told me:

“I am as baffled by this world as you are, dear.
For far too long I have had to lean on one leg
Whilst standing, to ease my ache, to wait things out.
Come, sit with me.”

And so I did.

Resplendent white, some archaic sentiment
Of false-purity – it bathes me. Washes me of colour,
‘till I’m baked in the reflective glow of sunlight,
Rinsed of history, of time, treasures and identity.

I’m his now.

This full-bodied mirror, she stands so ungainly
In her bridal pose. A slapstick siren, a young deer
On stilts; A stretch of church floor to hesitate over
Upon hatching. She must make it to the sea.

In this reflection, I see neither him nor I,
But a composite of his kindness, my eyes;
Small forget-me-nots of a daisy-chained child
And a waysided academic.

It’s not my fault, nor his. Our dreams were wasted
By fairytales, poisoned by old fortune. No story
Succeeded, no narrative complete, ‘till love is resolved,
Until love is in place.

I felt his ring around my finger
Before we’d even touched hands.
For, why would I ever care to scale such mountains,
In a world he casts so temperate and sure?

So with each year that shall pass,
From now ‘till some curtained collapse,
I shall reduce in my margins,
Fragmented elements and forgotten scope;

I dissolve unto him,
Stagnant upon his solution.
Aly Sep 2020
Eyes turned downwards in the shame of loving and forgetting, when love has been waysided to the lust of youth

Days were floating by as we struggled with our heads dowsed in the blood between our veins.
Our blood of memories soon to be
lives yet to be lived.

Your voice plays on the broken record in my head
all I can hear is the silence between three words

Thousands of lives between us
millions left unsaid
an infinity to continue beyond and a forever that doesn’t last always
Yet we pray, howling to gods that have faded away with the eastern rise
we pray for longing, the lingering effects of verses with unknown tongues traded and abated under our scorching sun
But let the moon love us in this absence
Let my love keep you from drowning
Let truth shine her light upon you
Removing all that is lost in searching
Still and quiet with time
painted and tainted until the dust removes one forsaken layer of words staining the cracks of new beginnings
‘You will always be golden to me’

— The End —